Tron: Invasion
by Sandbat
Summary: TRON/Blade Runner Fanfic. It's 2021, the Tyrell Corporation attempts a hostile takeover of Encom, and the Grid is caught in the crossfire.
1. Chapter 1

Title: TRON: INVASION  
Author: sandbat/number_5ev3n  
Rating: T for now, may or may not progress to M eventually.  
Synopsis: TRON/Blade Runner Fanfic. It's 2021, the Tyrell Corporation attempts a hostile takeover of Encom, and the Grid is caught in the crossfire.  
Disclaimer: Neither Disney nor Ridley Scott are half as scary as the Tyrell Corporation; nevertheless, neither TRON nor Blade Runner belong to me.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: As with most of my fics, this was inspired by a dream I had; in this case, one that occurred the night after my second viewing of TRON: Legacy. It's technically a crossover with Blade Runner; some of the characters in the dream were characters from my Blade Runner fic, which is still WIP (a little of it can be seen over on my LJ.) The two storylines got all caught up together to the point where I really couldn't extricate them.

...

The Grid was free once again after Clu's downfall. And for a while, everything was good.

The programs that populated the Grid knew little of the changes that were sweeping the real world, even as Sam Flynn enacted his own changes upon the Grid. Given new space to grow within the confines of the new system Sam imported it to, it did so exponentially. New cityscapes sprang up to occupy this vast new territory, connected together by winding highways and deep channels of luminous data.

Sam and Quorra shared administration of the new Grid, Grid 3.0. And once Tron was recovered, he gladly took up his protective duties. The games were reinstated, restored to the conditions under which they'd functioned before Clu had corrupted them. Existence within the Grid began to settle into a peaceful rhythm as the cycles passed.

If things weren't exactly _perfect_, they were close enough that the programs were content enough with their lot. As time went on, some of the programs soon caught on to the fact that one of Sam and Quorra's many goals within the new grid was to somehow recreate the conditions under which the Isomorphic Algorithms had originally sprung into being. This didn't bother them. Everyone seemed happy to follow their programmed directives and let the two Administrators get on with the task of Administrating.

If Sam and Quorra were being threatened and challenged in the real world - if things in the world of the Users were, in fact, taking a sharp turn for the worse - the Programs knew nothing of it. The Grid was their world, and their only concern - until the day their Administrators didn't return; the day that over six hundred cycles of peace within the Grid was finally shattered.

The Grid's citizens were used to long absences. Faced with the horror that Clu had been before his deresolution, Sam was not willing to program a copy of himself to act as Administrator while he was away. During the early cycles of Grid 3.0's inception, it had become common for Sam and Quorra to Admin in "shifts," switching out as needed. After everything stabilized and the programs settled into their directives, Sam and Quorra found themselves able to let things unfold, and the cycles between their visits lengthened.

As a result, no one was prepared for the attack when it happened.

The first sign that anyone had that something was wrong was that the lines of communication between cities were cut. Each city was designed to be a self-sufficient realm unto itself, though Sam encouraged cooperation and accord between the different city-states.

Aleph City was just such an enclave, with graceful spires gleaming with emerald green circuitry patterns which towered into the Grid sky. The color had originally been chosen as a tribute to the long-lost Bostrum Colony; and though Aleph City's inhabitants were all "basic" programs, they manifested the independence and ingenuity which had also been a hallmark of the Bostrumites.

Kelso, chief Monitor for Aleph City, stepped up security once Tron City and the other city-states stopped responding. It was a noble effort, and many lives were probably saved because of it.

In the end, it was not enough. Trapped within his own predicament, struggling to protect Quorra and all she represented for the future of humanity, Sam was nevertheless alert to the new danger threatening the digital world which was his father's legacy. A final, desperate gambit was hatched to save the Grid.

In time, those who survived would call the conflict the Tyrell Invasion, as the Grid - and Encom itself - came under the threat of full-scale annexation by the Tyrell Corporation.

….

It was approximately 599.12342 cycles into Arachne's assignment as City Monitor when everything went to hell.

It began as an odd shaking, as though an entire fleet of tanks were charging through the city. In fact, Arachne wondered if that was what it was; a large vehicle or vehicles moving outside, lumbering with enough force to disturb the surface of the decorative energy pools within the building where she was stationed. She stared in consternation at the rippling fluid, wondering what could possibly warrant the mobilization of such a force. Had the reason for the other cities' sudden silence been discovered? None of the riders who had been sent to find out what was going on had returned...

Arachne was thrown to the ground as a huge fissure suddenly ripped through the floor, swallowing everything - furniture, instruments, and her fellow programs - in its wake. Arachne could see the code dissolving as the floor itself derezzed.

"Everybody remain calm!" she shouted. It was what she'd been programmed to shout in an emergency situation, to remind programs that everything was under control. Except that it wasn't. Nobody within the Grid had ever experienced anything quite like an earthquake before.

The building collapsed between the space of the first and last word of that one sentence. Arachne was saved only by the fact that the debris around her fell in such a way that she wasn't crushed; but she was trapped.

In a blind panic, Arachne fell back on her original programming. She'd been an armory siren before Sam Flynn had repurposed her for Monitor duty; sirens hadn't been needed as much during the reconstruction. Monitors had been. Between bouts, it was common for sirens to go into standby mode until their services were required.

That was exactly what she did, until she came to to find Baud - a communications program who worked with the Monitors, and Niels - a disc warrior from the local games, were pulling her out of the wreckage.

"Arachne!" Baud shouted. "Are you all right? Can you hear me?"

Dazed, the first thing Arachne noticed was that Niels's armor was damaged. It would need to be replaced. She blinked, shaking her head as her secondary programming re-asserted itself.

"Is everyone all right? How long was I out?" Arachne asked, pushing the two men out of the way and pulling herself up onto her feet. She was a Monitor. She had to restore order.

"The whole city is falling apart," Niels said. "Kelso has organized us into search and rescue teams. We've been able to save some, like you, but many haven't been so lucky."

"_What happened?"_ Arachne demanded, as she took in the massive scale of the damage all around her.

"We don't know," Baud answered shakily. "It started very suddenly, and then it just stopped. Kelso has been trying to reach Sam and Quorra on the outside, other cities, anyone. Nobody has any answers."

Arachne felt horrible for him; he looked sickened and scared. But then, it was impossible not to feel the same way as she surveyed the destruction that lay all around her.

….

Arachne joined Baud and Niels in the task of recovering lost and damaged programs from the toppled ruins. Recognizers were being employed in the search, and Arachne soon found herself in command of one as the rescue efforts stretched into the next millicycle. Some few programs went along with them in the search, frantically trying to determine the fates of lost friends as they picked through the rubble even as they told themselves it would be okay; Sam and Quorra would be back, they would explain what had gone wrong, and everything would be made right again. Others simply stood and stared at the wreckage, at the derezzed fragments of their loved ones, or simply off into space; helpless tears pouring down their cheeks as they tried to make sense of what had happened to them and their beloved city.

One of these stood atop a pile of debris; a small woman whom Aracnhe would have figured for a diagnostics or communications program, from the looks of her. She seemed just as lost and horrified as they all were at that point. What caught Arachne's attention to her initially was her circuitry pattern; unlike the green of most of the city's inhabitants, hers gleamed white as it shone through the fabric of her garments. She startled, and tried to run away as Arachne landed the Recognizer nearby.

"Hello? Are you all right, program?" Arachne asked, intercepting the woman and taking her by the shoulder. The girl flinched, shuddering.

"It's okay, program," Arachne assured her. "You're safe now. What is your name and function? Which city are you from?" She knew that there had been programs from other cities who'd been stranded in Aleph when the communication lines went dead. City affiliation aside; as far as Arachne was concerned, they were all in this together.

"Hel. Maintainance," the girl answered. "Is this really happening? Is this _real?_ Are you really here? Am I really seeing this?"

"It's going to be all right, Hel," Arachne told the traumatized program, with conviction that she wished she truly felt. "We will disseminate more information about what caused this event as soon as it's made available to us."

"Is that a _Recognizer_?" Hel asked, her eyes wide with shock.

"It's all right. You're not in trouble. Shelters are being erected in the areas that have already been cleared. Energy is being distributed there. Please come with me."

"I...I can _help_," the girl insisted. "Just let me know what you want me to do."

"If you're judged fit enough, you'll be sorted into one of the teams which are being assembled for search and rescue purposes. Please come with me now, program."

"Right. Okay." Hel said, as Arachne steered her towards the Recognizer.

It wasn't until they were on the platform that Arachne realized that Hel had no disc.


	2. Chapter 2

Helena closed her eyes as the pale woman in the glowing armor herded her aboard the craft, thinking that this had to be a trick of her sensorium; she was hallucinating. The old synthetic nerve fibers were misfiring again; that had to be it.

Sam had told her there would be A.I. in this thing that his father had created, which he and Quorra had safeguarded up until this point. Sentient A.I. entities, exactly the kind that were banned along with replicants when the Oligarchy had finally put its foot down after the first replicant revolt.

He hadn't told her what form it would take.

_Goddamn Recognizers, for Fnord's sake!_

In fact, she had known almost nothing, up until this point. They had told her nothing. Helena had always _known_ that there was something; some last product of genius that Kevin Flynn had cooked up before he'd disappeared.

_Mom would freak. This was the thing she always hoped to find - the nugget of info that she'd always hoped Sam would let slip one day._

Well, here it was. And now she was here, too. Actually in it.

Thing was, it was all an accident. She wasn't supposed to be in here at all. All Sam had told her to do before the cops dragged him away was to move it, to relocate it to someplace safe. It was someplace safe _now,_ except that she'd taken the laser - a device precisely the same size and shape of an old-style webcam, exactly like the kind she'd grown up with - along with the rest of it.

She hadn't known what it was for when she'd hooked it back up with the rest of Sam's tablet computer, exactly the same way it had been before when she'd found it in room 89 of the Emperor Norton Hotel – a building which Sam and Quorra had owned through the Dumont company before the Tyrell corporation had taken control of it, too.

In fact, the thought that had crossed her mind before she'd answered "Y" to "CLEAR APERTURE, Y/N?" was, _'what is Sam doing with this antiquated POS on his tablet?'_

_Oops. I guess I should have gone with "Sam, what are you doing with a mothertrucking laser on your goddamn computer?" for three hundred, Alex._

It was obvious that the laser had something to do with what she was experiencing now, like the projected 3D MMORPG LARP that she and her friends enjoyed in their downtime - but how, exactly? All she'd seen was one bright flash before she'd found herself in the broken ruins of a once-mighty metropolis. She wondered exactly how it was inducing this scene into her brain - because no freaking way she was actually physically, bodily here. That kind of thing just didn't happen in real life.

Gaff - as insufferable and inscrutable as he usually was – had been there, too when the police had taken Sam into custody. Helena didn't _think_ he'd seen her. At least, she hoped not. The fact that the Tyrell corporation was finally taking full control of Encom and all its holdings was the reigning scandal of the day. The police had made a huge show of taking Sam into custody on the charges of which the Tyrell corporation had accused him.

For once, Gaff and his flunkies weren't looking for her. But she hated to think about what his presence probably meant for Sam.

"_It's okay,"_ he'd told her. "_I'll spend the night in jail. I've done it before. Big deal."_

_Not if they can charge you with harboring illegal sentient A.I. entities on Earth, Sam,_ Helena thought. _And if they can make it stick...oh Fnord. Good thing I have the evidence._

Someone had turned on the wireless radio on the computer, though, before she'd found it. Some disgruntled hotel employee, perhaps; one whose offworld bank account had probably just grown by several thousand dollars – giving the blackhats on the Tyrell corporation's payroll enough time to break in.

_But if they had access to the evidence, why would they try to destroy it? Everything they need to put Sam away forever is here. If they manage to get Quorra extradited from the Lunar station...damn,_ Helena thought, removing her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose against the crashing feeling of helplessness that suddenly bombarded her. _I'm sure I've done stupider things than get myself caught up in a digital hallucination when my friends need help, but right now I can't think of any._

She only hoped that the rest of the Black Rock Irregulars could think of a way get them out of it somehow...

"It's going to be all right," said one of the other folks on the Recognizer; a tall, solidly-build black man in armor similar to her captor's, which glowed from the seams with the same brilliant green phosphorescence. "We'll figure all of this out somehow."

"Does anyone really believe that?" asked another, smaller, man who crouched in a far corner of the deck, his pale face illuminated by the greenish glow of his own pattern. Helena wondered if the lines only went as far as their clothes, or if they emanated from their skin and radiated outward through their garments. She could see her own surgery scars clearly through the black fabric of her tracksuit, limned with a stark white light. Pulling up her sleeve, she could clearly make out the strobing ghost-impression of the nerve implants underneath her skin. Seen together, it looked to her like a broken neon sign - one composed of the messy Zalgo text she'd seen on the meme sites in her teens. She wondered if the implants in her head were visible; they probably would be, if she shaved her head in this place -

"Look around you, Niels!" the crouching man exclaimed, de-railing her train of thought. "Does it really look like anything is going to be okay ever again?" he laughed, a panicked, manic edge to his voice. "Sam and the ISO are _gone._ They've abandoned us."

"They have not." Helena interjected, shoving her glasses back on. She wondered why the man referred to Quorra as "the ISO."

"She's right, Baud. I can't imagine that they'd just leave things like this," the burly program - Niels? - said.

"Then where are they? Do you know something we don't?" the man - Baud? retorted.

"They need help," Helena said, staring at the ruins below. Could she break herself out of this fantasy by throwing herself from the craft? Was it as simple as finding the boundaries of this projection, and passing through it somehow? She took a step closer to the railing, and resolved to find out.

"WOAH! You do NOT want to do that, program!" Niels shouted, grabbing her and wrenching her to safety. "It's going to be all right, I swear."

"What's going on over there?" the voice of the woman who'd brought Helena aboard sounded from the craft's helm.

"Listen, I've got to get back somehow! Sam needs help, and I'm not supposed to be here!" Helena exclaimed, after a futile attempt to break out of Niels's grasp.

"What do you mean, "get back?" Baud hissed, drawing back from her as if he expected to catch fire.

"Nobody else in the city has a circuitry pattern like yours, Hel. Where did you come from? What's going on with Sam and Quorra?" Niels asked.

"Are you a User?" Baud snapped, the question sounding to Helena's ears like an accusation.

"Am I a User of what?" Helena asked, bewildered.

"Where are Sam and Quorra? Why didn't they help us? _Where is Tron?_ He's supposed to be protecting us! Why don't they come?" Baud shouted, nearly bowling Niels over as he grabbed her by the front of her jacket.

_Tron?_ Helena wondered.

"Sam's currently being held by our enemies," she answered. "He tried to put a bold face on it, but...well. They're probably the ones who did this to your simulation. Mothertrucking script kiddies in the Tyrell Corporation's employ. Whoever put Sam's tablet online left the gate wide open to their attack."

"So it was an attack," Niels stated, as if this confirmed what he'd already suspected. "You getting all this, Arachne?"

"In bits," the woman at the helm confirmed, her face tight with concentration as she steered the Recognizer around a tower that had fallen and lay diagonally braced against another.

"Who is Tron?" Helena asked.

"Tron, the warrior. The sentinel. Tron the protector," Niels said reverently.

""You mean...Tron, as in the video game Tron? Tron is real? Wow. If I told you this was a lot to take in, it would be an understatement," Helena said.

"How'd you get in here," Niels asked her. "Who or what is the Tyrell Corporation? I at least want to know what we're up against."

"The Tyrell Corporation is making a move against Encom. They're bastards. Sam told me to recover the device this simulation is being stored on. And uh, well..."

"Let me guess. You took a wrong turn somewhere, right?"

"Uh, yeah. That's about the size of it."

"Why are we just standing here talking about all of this? You're a User, so _do something._ Fix this," Baud pleaded.

Helena's eyes scanned the horizon, taking in the destruction that surrounded them.

"I can try...I'm a programmer, but all of this is so over my head, I wouldn't even know where to begin," she said. "Best case scenario, we find Sam and get him back here so he can clean up the mess those jerks left."

"What about Quorra?" Arachne asked from her place at the helm.

"She's offworld. She left when this mess all started. She didn't want to...Fnord, I'd have liked to have seen what she would've have done to the Gaffstapo when they took Sam away, if she'd been there. But Sam told her that the future was in her hands, or something, and she went. Sam's last act before being arrested was to send her away."

"He was protecting the ISO while we were being attacked?" Baud exclaimed, incredulous.

"He was protecting the mother of his child. Quorra's pregnant," Helena said. She darted a look between them. "No one else is supposed to know that, by the way. Why do you keep calling her 'the ISO?'"

"What is the Gaffstapo?" Niels asked.

"Blade Runners. Cops who specialize in hunting down replicants and sentient programs who go rogue."

"Why didn't they tell us about any of this?" Arachne demanded, turning to face Helena from the Recognizer's controls. "Why did they never mention that they had such powerful enemies amongst the Users? Is what we are...is our whole world forbidden? And if Quorra left, why didn't she just take us with her?"

"It's likely that the tablet would have been seized when she went through customs. They'd have been tipped off. It's precisely the kind of thing they'd have been looking for," Helena explained. "This vendetta between Sam and the Tyrell Corporation goes way back," Helena said. "It would take hours to explain it all."

"And because we're Programs, you don't think we'll understand it?" Baud interjected angrily.

"No, man...it's just that there are so many threads, so many pieces on the board. How do I get back so I can help Sam?"

"We need to get you to the portal," Niels answered. "It's in the Outlands beyond the Sea of Simulation."

"That doesn't sound close," Helena said.

"Not really," Niels agreed. "It closes after a set period of time. And if the rest of the Grid is doing as badly as we are..."

"Then we'd better get a move on," Arachne said, finishing his thought. "I'll check in with Kelso. He may be able to advise us further in this."

"What about Tron? Nobody's heard from him for millicycles. What if they've derezzed Tron?" Baud asked.

"I can't imagine Tron would just let this slide - but even he can't be everywhere at once," Niels sagely remarked.


End file.
